By Shaenon K. Garrity

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Yeah, another rare moment where I decide to play with the layout for no discernible reason. Artie and Dave turned out so nicely in the first panel that it’s all the more upsetting that a) Artie’s left foot is turned uncomfortably, and b) I don’t know what the hell the ladder attaches to at the bottom. That ladder bugs me so much I can’t focus on anything else in the strip.

I’m glad I closed the plot hole about the whereabouts of Dave’s miraculously long-distance cell phone, though. I thought this would be a good point in the story for Helen to have a conversation with Mell.

Mell’s dialogue in the first two panels is based on stuff George S. Patton said. The last two panels are pure Mell.

Helen’s last line here is pretty thoroughly autobiographical. I do like that line, but my favorite part of this strip is Mell’s casually insulting assessment of Dave in the first panel. Also, in the third panel, one robot is polishing her shoes while another offers her a platter of grenades, which is pretty good.

Note that Mell says she knows two mad geniuses besides Helen. This turns out to be important.

This conversation is based on another speech from Patton. I’m not really such a huge George S. Patton fan. I just thought it would be funny if Mell talked like this. Possibly I was wrong.

…Nah, I was right. Push on, men, push on,” is just lovely. The sunglasses and cigar help a lot.

In Greek legend and the blockbuster trilogy by Sophocles, Antigone is the daughter (and half-sister*) of Oedipus. In Oedipus at Colonus, the hit sequel to Oedipus Rex, she leads him around everywhere, Oedipus having put out his own eyes at the end of the previous play because he was so squicked out about marrying his mom. This is a slightly odd reference for Artie to make immediately after mentioning Helen, but Artie has some mother issues.

People were asking why Artie wasn’t more upset about being practically blind without Dave’s glasses, and this, along with the strip where he’s upset about lacking whiskers, is the answer. Artie is much less bothered by his poor (by human standards) eyesight than he is by his totally inadequate (by rodent standards) hearing and scent. (How does he smell? Terrible!) Rodents also navigate by touch and vibration, being built low to the ground, and an upright human body isn’t very useful for that either.

*He loved his mother like no other/His daughter was his sister and his son was his brother. Thanks, Tom Lehrer!

Argh, too wordy. This strip was inspired by a conversation with James Rice about those geometric puzzles where you move toothpicks around. I’m really bad at those things. (Cue countdown to someone in the comments saying that it’s because I’m a woman and women are naturally bad at that stuff. I’m actually good at some other spatial reasoning puzzles; I just can’t do the toothpick thing. Or draw bicycles.)

Although Artie’s point is well taken (and “brain potluck” is a useful phrase for many occasions), Helen has a perfectly good reason to have tried to light her pants on fire. Obviously, she was testing her Kevlar pants.

Umm…at the bottom, the ladder appears to be quite firmly bracketed into the wall. Nice big bracket-squares and everything, even properly bolted at all four corners. Not personally seeing a problem here- My buddies’ attic ladder is bolted up similarly

Also, I personally just feel that Dave tinkered with his cell phone absentmindedly while swapping battery packs, hence it being able to call from the moon.

Somehow I feel that you should have committed to the vertical layout by stacking both of the concluding panels beneath the first. Placing them in an L-shaped pattern subtly implies that the two panels are ‘on the same level’ as the first, when in fact they both take place in entirely different locations.

Well, the ladder can’t be attached to the wall behind Dave and Artie, because that would make the two of them about 3 inches thick. Perhaps it’s bolted to the fourth wall?

No, wait! It’s bolted to the fourth wall at the top and descends diagonally through the shaft until it attaches to the rear wall at the bottom. Dave is about as far down the ladder as he can get before he has to swing down onto the floor. God knows why Madblood designed it that way, though.

I think the ladder is attached to the floor in front of a weird, curvy “access shaft” that the trio just came from, with Madblood standing a few feet ahead of the ladder. (I imagine Madblood walked past the ladder and paused to get his bearings and decide whether to continue forward along the shaft or go up the ladder.)

And Artie’s foot is twisted because he’s not familiar enough yet with his human form to climb a ladder smoothly. (I wouldn’t have noticed the foot if Shaenon hadn’t commented on it.)

Clearly, the ladder is bolted securely to the wall behind them, however from our perspective we are unable to see the foot and a half rod perpendicular to the wall and ladder that joins the ladder to the bolting apparatus.

Definitely bolted to the wall with spaces we can’t see. That design allows much work from the ladder since you can brace your back against the wall. As far as the foot, give the poor guy a break, Artie is still figuring out that human motion thing. It’s perfectly reasonable he’d put a foot wrong on occasion. Especially since he has to avoid stepping on Dave.

@ Elaine I don’t know. I can think of some strips in “Madness” where she’s pretty fricken’ ecstatic. Quoting two: “I’m the happiest girl in the woooorld!” and later, “This. Is why. I was put. On Earth.”

Mell threw a wrench into my plans!She’s gonna conquer all the lands!She says to do as she commands!That Mell threw a wrench into my plans!

Oh well … big deal … another chance I’ll get!I never fume or fret;I just play Xanatos Roulette!See, not a tear I shed!Whee, gonna laugh instead!I’m gonna do whatever dumb thing pops into my head!

I’m gonna make some mayhem‘Cause I’m an evil sort!I’m gonna get poor Artie to transmogrify and teleport!I’m gonna scheme from midnightUntil the break of dawn!I will twist your DNAUntil at last I get my way,Then all my foes will sayThat I’m a true Nar-bon!

Dave’s lifestyle is becoming a bit too much of a punchline punching-bag lately.

I don’t know why Mell only considers Dave to be a threat. Didn’t Artie or his intellectual equals almost manage a coup within the first months of their life?

Speaking of which, I just realised that it’s a dreadful shame that Helen disposed of the Angel of Death some time back – she could just spin it around and, with just a few small calculations, take out the moonbase lickety-zot.

You know, since Dave’s on his second body, and Helen mentioned that she did a few things to make it more familier for Dave when she brought him back, including weakening his eyesight, he actually _could_ complain to her if he felt the desire.

Of course, being this strip, such an enterprise would likely to horribly wrong for Dave.

Artie shouldn’t have such high expectations for a form created in a teleportation accident – or, indeed, that such a felicitous, spontaneous form is an entirely accurate facsimile of Dave’s sorry structure. I mean, any moment now he (Artie) could start spontaneously sprouting a tail or turning into Helen, or growing ninety feet tall or something. (Actually, that last possible abberation would be an equally fitting way to dispose of Madblood’s base – at least, insofar as it matches the current ridiculous situation.)

Oedipus Rex, one day his mood was kinda bad …Felt a bit vexed, he ran a sword right through his dad!Fates intertwined, married the lady who whelped him …When he went blind, “sister” Antigone helped him!Life is unkind, out of his mind, nerves ain’t too steadyOedipus Rex!

In Oedipus defense he didn’t know she was his mother. He was abandoned for fear of the prophesy that he would kill his father and marry his mother and belived his parents were other people, and ironically when he found out of the prophesy he ran away from home right into his actual parents. This is why you don’t lie to your kids

As someone that actually owns a couple of pairs of fireproof pants, I had tried to correct Shaenon that NOMEX is used rather than Kevlar. At the time of our discussion, neither of us looked up to see that NOMEX is actually the meta variant of Kevlar.

I don’t remember how or why, but I wound up with the original for this strip.

Madblood and Artie never really say anything to each other throughout this webcomic. Nor, if my memory serves me correctly, does Artie get time to discuss with Lovelace the existential rigors of being a manufactured person. It seems a little bit of a shame that these tiers of characters are seemingly penned off from each other.

[Wednesday] Yeah, the fact that Mel apparently only knows of two other mad scientists she could call on tells us she a) wasn’t paying attention/didn’t think through the implications of the HelenDave incident; b) has a terrible memory or c) doesn’t count one of the three mad scientists (other than Helen B Narbon) she has had on-panel contact with (my bet is not counting Dr Narbon, as Mel knows she can’t intimidate or afford her).

“That’s mad genius for you. It’s kind of a brain potluck.” So true, ohhhh so true… Ah, Shaenon, how ever did you know?

…Oh, wait, you’re a cartoonist. Never mind–you have personal experience in the whole “brain potluck” thing. (Thus proving that “cartoonist” is to art majors what “mad scientist” is to science and engineering majors… namely, a <90% chance of acquiring mind-boggling insanity if you don't already have it. The genius part you already possess. Cases in point: Nikola Tesla [sciences] and Charles Martin "Chuck" Jones [art].)